


Tea

by HighVelocity



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighVelocity/pseuds/HighVelocity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt visits New York, once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea

Matt visits New York, once, when he emails Will about him currently being on leave, an exhibition at the Met Museum about photography, and being closer to the Major's side of the pond than his own. One flurry of phone calls later, two minutes spent deciding exactly what he'd need to take(essentially everything, because there really isn't much on him), three nervous hours fighting through bloody traffic and one too-long plane ride, and he's walking through the gates with his pack slung over his shoulder, looking out for a familiar messy thatch of dark brown hair. Matt has all of five minutes to feel ridiculous for not having a cheap mobile phone on him, at least, so he could confirm where Will is, before there's movement to his left and he's drawn into a bone-crushing hug.

He returns it with a ringing slap between Will's shoulderblades, chuckling low in his throat, through the stupidly    
_happy_   
 flutter somewhere in his chest. "Goddamn Yankee fuck, you'd have to try and break all my bones the second I land on American soil," Matt growls affectionately, by way of greeting. 

"You fucking limey git," Will laughs, brown eyes glittering, peeling away. He takes the lead as he strides off, and Matt automatically falls into step beside him, carving a path through milling humanity on their way to the carpark. "Not like you're any better - six hours' advance notice isn't the best either, you asshole. Good flight?"

"Beats a Hercules anyday," he reponds serenely, shifting his pack. The look the Ranger gives him has a quirked eyebrow and subtle disbelief. Matt raises his own eyebrows and matches it with schoolboy innocence, until Will cracks a grin, and he laughs. 

"No, I do mean it. And there were only two squalling babies this time, and a minimum of fussy kids and alcohol-imbibing passengers," Matt recounts, as they stop beside a plain gray sedan. "And any sort of padding is better than none. Also, we didn't have to throw anyone out of the plane." He nearly heads to the driver's side, forgetting America and their backwards left-hand drives, before he checks himself at the car's rear quarterpanel.

He doesn't need to see Will's face to know that the man is trying not to laugh.

"Bloody Yank," he mutters for effect, popping the car boot open to dump his pack. A laugh floats through the air, sending a welcome little shiver that eases the tension in his shoulders. Matt slides into the passenger seat, momentarily off-balance at the blank space of a glove box before him instead of a steering wheel. Will notices this and grins at him, sharp and toothy.

"Buckle up, you amusingly, delightfully confused Englishman. You're in New York now, not London."

"Oh, fuck off, Lennox."

"Yeah, yeah. So. Welcome to NYC, Captain. Where we all drive on the    
_right_   
 side, instead of the    
_wrong_   
 side."

Matt's grin makes his cheeks hurt, launching into a spirited, if old debate, that they'd started during their days together in NEST and never really ended.

"You fantastic, humongous idiot, the left side    
_is_   
 the correct side to drive on in about 80% of the known, civilised world."

"You for serious?" 

"No, I just made that up. The number, that is, but everything else is fuckin God's truth."

"Oh fuck you."

"Yeah? Name the time and place, Major."

"... Times Square. Middle of the day."

"Sure. Here, where's your little black book, hand it over."

"Matt, I don't have a 'little black book'."

"Bollocks. I know you have a notebook. I've seen it. Now, just let me put that down for... 30th February, how does that sound?"

Will snorts as he pulls out, sparing the time to flash the other man a brilliant grin.

"Coming from you, Matt, that's perfect."

\---

"The Met."

"Yes."

"You, want to go to the Met."

Graham spares the time to roll his eyes so hard they consider, briefly, dropping right out of his skull.

"Did your last stint with the mechs rob you of some mental faculty that I wasn't aware of? Are you allergic to museum air? Or is a little bit of culture just that beyond you? Yes, Will, I want to go to the Met." 

Deliberately arched eyebrows and an expression that dares Will to do it, to come along with him, meet a cowboy's shit-eating, fearless grin, and he's treated to the sight of his former CO doubling over with laughter on the cheap couch in the tiny living room. It's temporary, too, and the Ranger will be headed out to Diego Garcia in another three months when he's done with whatever it is he needs to do. Matt didn't ask; Will isn't telling.

"Oh god, I've just put up a... a... God, Matt, I don't even know what to call it. How come I never fucking knew you were this much into art? Coming all the way to see an exhibit?"

"I bloody well emailed you, you heartless, terrible man," he retorts, English vowels crisp and rounded in the way he knows can make Will sit up and beg, perched on the arm of the couch with a beer in hand and another for his favourite Amerikanski. It has its intended effect, and although it's probably his imagination, Will's brown eyes seem to darken, gaze flicking low, then back up. Matt gives him a look that lets him know he's seen the direction of that gaze as he holds out the longneck. He's missed this, the incessant ragging between equals, the subtle fight for position of top dog. 

Not that it    
_never_   
 happens - it just doesn't have the same flavour.

"Yeah, well all you'd said was 'exhibition', in that email," Will points out, accepting the bottle, fingers curling around the frosted glass. He shifts on the couch, an unspoken invitation for Matt to sit. "I don't recall you saying anything about it being at the Met. Or that it was an art exhibition."

"I like photographs," Matt says simply, almost primly, and it sets Will off into snorting laughter. The Brit shakes his head in mock despair, taking a long swallow from the bottle in hand. "Incorrigible bastard."

\---

Will spends a hushed afternoon debating the merits of black and white versus sepia versus colour and the magic of the foggy mystery in the photographs of Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand, especially the ones of the sky. Matt traces a thumbnail in one of the leaflets they have, something in his eyes soft and faraway. It's a gesture that doesn't go unnoticed, and Will simply tilts his head at the man, a silent question in his eyes when Matt's gaze flicks to him.

"He loved the art," Matt says, voice hushed in the gallery. They're almost to the end of the exhibition now, long legs matching stride for stride on their way out, where the air is less rarified and more    
_alive_   
. He clears his throat, folds the leaflets in half and shoves them in his back pocket. 

"My grandfather, that is. Loved the photographs. It was like magic to us, you know, big box, mounted on funny sticks, big puff of smoke and suddenly, a week or more later, a little bit of magic emerging from paper. So when the old man passed away, he left us all these... boxes, heaps upon heaps of photographs, all soft at the edges like the ones in there," he says with a tip of his head to the space behind them. Capsule history in misty images. "He wasn't exactly great at it, you know, but it was fantastic, all of it, for the history recorded in there. Seeing the old farmhouse. Like it was, 50, maybe 60 years ago, and stand in front of it and compare that photograph to what it looks like now. How the countryside's grown up around it."

They walk in silence for a while, until Matt pauses, tilts his head at a display window, thumbs hooked in his pockets.

"Still have them?" he presses lightly, curious and wanting to know more. For a brief moment, he was allowed into something that lay closer to the core of the man. Will treasures these moments, holds them close, appreciative of the fact that these are the parts of Matt that he displays only for a select few.

"Yeah." His smile is sweetly crooked, lopsided. "Hey, you find yourself on the right side of the pond, I might just be able to dig up a few."

"I'd like that," Will says quietly.

\---

Matt spends a half hour arguing with Will - he'd wanted to have tea at the Met, but Will took strange and unusual exception to that. So they'd argued(gently) back and forth for ages(30 minutes and change) about that, and then the damned Yank upped the ante and said    
_he_   
 made a better cuppa than the hopeless bastards in the Met, and besides, everyone in America subsists on coffee and Coke, not tea and lemonade and bloody Pimms. 

He's not sure if he should laugh or sock him one in the jaw. 

Instead, Matt ends up leaning into Will's shoulder, in a breathless fit of laughter when the Ranger suggests cucumber sandwiches to go with the 'frilly frou-frou girly tea party' he's got in mind that would fit the trooper    
_just_   
 right. "Of all the bloody things you could've had brought up, it had to be cucumber sandwiches," Matt chuckles. 

Inexplicably, it starts to rain as they're on their way back to Will's apartment. To them, it's little more than a fine mist, but to everyone else, huddled in upturned collars and black umbrellas, it may as well be a biblical deluge. Matt comments on that as they enter the bright lights of a convenience store that they drop into. Will has decided their little feast will require food, of the variety that doesn't come in pre-mixed boxes, or on wheels, and he's currently on a hunt for good ground beef and potato rolls.

"It's like the Wicked Witch of the West," Will says, making a beeline for the cheese section.

"How's that?"

"You know. The Wizard of Oz. The line that goes 'I'm    
_melting_   
.'" Will exaggerates a shudder and mimics puddling on the floor with a quick wriggle of long, tanned fingers. "Civilians hate rain. Except for when they're smart and can tell the difference between 'drizzle' and 'tropical downpour,' or listened to the weather report and kitted up for the day."

When he plays civilian, his wedding band flashes gold in the light. When he's the Major, when he's in mission mode, the ring nestles close to his heart, sliding on a ballchain with his dogtags. Today, his hands are bare, but Matt knows that the ring is present on the chain, a promise tucked underneath cotton and leather. He watches as Will picks up a package of cheese slices, and slips it into the shopping basket. 

There is an odd domesticity to it all that makes Matt itch between his shoulder blades. He nicks the cheese out of the basket instead of dwelling on that, studying the packaging. "This reads like MRE food," he says, eyebrows creeping up on his forehead. "This isn't even cheese, Will, it's    
_cheese product_   
. I mean, you've got some good melters in here that aren't plastic." He gestures with a hand, mouth tilted up at one corner. 

"Ahh, bullshit, Captain." Will grabs the packet of cheese slices back out of Matt's hand, thumping his shoulder before tossing it back into the basket. "Like you Brits are any better, with your black pudding and shit." He pulls a face at Matt's innocent look, turning on him again. "'Sides, you must really be jonesing for action if you're missing MRE chow already."

"Pot, kettle," Matt fires back, dumping the package into Will's arms. "I'm not the one who picked it out."

"It's a great melter," snips the Ranger. "Besides, it's the classic accoutrement of the great American cheeseburger." 

"I can't believe you even know what 'accoutrement' means."

\---

The apartment is reached in good time, and they may or may not have had been engaged in a subtle battle of speed, where Matt is pipped only by the virtue of Lennox having the keys and marginally longer legs. Rain-damp gear is shucked off and groceries carted into the kitchen, where Graham again falls prey to the strange sense of domesticity, when they move in tandem with each other. He chalks it down to battlefield habits. After all, it's happened with his mates, too.

Will sets the kettle on the stove and sets Matt to work packing away perishables and other, more long-lived food items. Task done, he watches in fascination as Will expertly warms the pot, the cups, measures out the tea - an aromatic, spicy blend that matches the weather perfectly - and sets it to brew.

"I'm impressed," Matt comments, arms folded on the kitchen table, the fragrant scent of brewing tea easing tension from his shoulders. He flashes Will a grin, crosses his ankles. "Looks like we'll be able to make a proper Englishman out of you yet."

Pleased, Will's eyes crinkle at their corners as he slides into a chair. Dark brown eyes skate across him to something behind him, looking into the distance. "Just one of my many great hidden talents. Okay, that rain's really coming down hard now."

"Not surprising," Matt replies, twisting in his seat to peer at the windows. Fat droplets of water are dashed against the glass by gusting winds, and he makes a sound. "For all that, I'm glad I'm not in that."

"Shit, so'm I. I mean, it's an    
_awesome_   
 change after sand, sand, and more fucking sand, but it gets gloomy. No wonder you fucking limeys are always so dour."

"Dour?"

Will watched him out of hooded eyes, grinning to himself when Graham sat back in pretend shock.

"Well,    
_fuck_   
 me. Who are you and what have you done with William Lennox? Really now. Accoutrement, dour... It's as though you've gone and memorised a thesaurus."

"Hey," Will jabs a finger at him in mock warning. "Don't be getting all jealous, now."

\---

It doesn't take much for Matt to find himself between Will's legs, back to his chest, with the other's hands on his hips, his sternum, hiking up his shirt. Mostly consumed burgers still sit on the cheap plastic plates on the low coffee table where they'd moved, talking easily in fits and bursts, in between swapping intel and just comfortable silence while they nursed cups of tea, and then bottles of beer when Will could no longer keep up the pretense of old country dignity.

"How long will you be stateside?" Will mouths at the fine skin behind Matt's ear, chest rising and falling as the rhythm of their inhale-exhale syncs up. An imperceptible shudder ripples through Matt, his hand squeezing Will's knee. 

"I have two weeks' worth of leave," he replies, head tilted to offer up the sinewy line of his neck to Will's teeth. "But I have to be back in the UK for the latter half of it. Gives me about... five days, give or take."

"Time enough," the Ranger growls, sinking his teeth into offered flesh, gratified at the hiss it elicits from Matt. He soothes it over with an open-mouthed kiss. "Now that you've been to the Met. Maybe the museum next. Get souvenirs to post home, or whatever." Each sentence is punctuated by kneading fingers and nipping teeth, the rough pull of hands to encourage Matt's legs apart, so that he can work open the fly of his jeans and close around the hardening line of his cock. 

Matt reads the unspoken sentiment under that - and he knows that he can also expect to be fucked solidly into the couch, the mattress, any surface they could think to desecrate in Will's apartment, until he leaves New York. 

"You're footing the taxi fares," he mumbles over his shoulder. Will chuckles in his ear, sending a shiver down his back.

"Sure."


End file.
